Sir Ernest Shackleton Leadership Characteristics

Sir Ernest Shackleton had all of the most important characteristics of a perfect leader, plus more. He was able to stay motivated, optimistic and very resourceful throughout his entire dangerous, freezing cold, backbreaking, journey across the Atlantic ocean. But why should a leader possess these traits? How do they help?

The first trait that a good leader should have is motivation. Motivation is what starts the journey. It is the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. Without Motivation nobody would get anywhere or do anything with their lives. To be motivated you usually have something or someone motivating you. One of Shackleton 's most famous quotes is “If you 're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you 've

The last thing that is very important for a leader to be, is resourceful. Being resourceful means that you have the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. This is very important because you need to know how to make a new plan when the first one goes wrong or something unexpected comes up. Not everything is going to go as expected or as you hoped. Shackleton shows this characteristic a lot. He knows what to do when something doesn 't work out. When they had planned to stay in Grytviken only a short while, Shackleton changed the plan to wait one or two weeks longer so that the warm weather would break up the ice. Sometimes the plan won 't be pleasant, but you have to choose it anyway. Like when Shackleton had to come up with a solution to make the food stores last as long as possible, he had to make the crew eat seal meat. Or when there was too much pressure on the ship and Shackleton had to order men to hack away at floes at the side of the ship with axes and picks in shift rotations. Another time he displayed this skill was when their first plan went wrong so he had to have a quiet conference with Wild and then announced his plan to the crew. The plan he came up with is that they would march across the frozen sea with two of the three lifeboats to Paulet island, 346 miles to the northwest. Then to the best of Shackleton 's knowledge, there would be a cache of stores in a hut on Paulet Island from a 1902 Swedish expedition. They would then come up with a plan from there. Without his problem solving they wouldn’t get anywhere. He also thought about things that could happen so that he could prevent them. For example, when the crew was traveling Shackleton kept the men, sleds and boats close together so that in case the ice cracked open they wouldn 't get separated. He was a quick thinker and found many different ways to overcome